> Is the creation of marketing material that is so > far removed from the target product to become an > interesting thing in its own right a valid model > for doing business?
If by 'valid' you mean 'effective', yes. So are many other forms of fraud and deception.
> The judge gives the jury instructions on which > facts have to be demonstrated in order to return > which verdict. It becomes a set of if-then > propositions. If Person X did such-and-such, in > such-and-such way, then return a verdict of > "guilty."
If that is true there is no point in having a jury at all.
> If one lies, there is the risk of being caught, > as evidenced by the Bell Labs fraud; perhaps this > is even more likely to pass in an industrial > environment where profit can be a motive behind > "[making] up shit and [lying]".
That's ridiculous. The point of industrial research is to produce things that work so they can be sold for a profit. "Making up shit and lying" does not produce things that work.
> Yahoo's privacy policy reads that way because > they offer financial services and the like, where > they may well need financial information from you > to provide the service.
Why can't they have different policies for different services?
> I have to say that I echo the concerns that > others have expressed over the reliability and > veracity of news reports filed through an > informal network of uncertified sources.
Would you mind telling us who certifies news sources and why we should care?
> News that you can't rely on to be timely *and* > accurate is worse than no news at all.
Nonetheless that's just what we get from the conventional media.
> I've already witnessed numerous instances where > this has resulted in even the "big names" > getting their facts wrong.
I've seen no evidence that the "big names" are any more likely to get their facts right off the Net than on.
It might get more attention if the Slashdot story provided a link to a summary of the case. Odd as it may seem, there _are_ Slashdot readers who don't know who Blizzard and Bnetd are or why the are in court.
> I think the only way to preserve data over the > very long term (thousands of years) is to assume > that whoever reads it in the future will be an > alien (eg so different from us as to make any > assumptions impossibile). Assume nothing about > what we may have in common, and start from the > basics.
The way to preserve data of the very long term is to keep making lots of copies in lots of different places on different media and with lots of commentary and explanation added by each generation.
> Any digital data that wants to be permanent...
_Nothing_ is permanent. As soon as you start thinking in terms of a single indestructible copy you've lost. For every Domesday book or Rosetta stone that we still have how many thousand ancient documents are so lost that we don't even know they existed?
Whether or not all MITRE employees are idiots is irrelevant to my point. The fact is that most DoD officials have great respect for MITRE, which has been advising the DoD on technical and policy issues since long before Microsoft was founded.
> This comes after MITRE, a defense contractor, > published a report stating that not only does the > Department of Defense use opensource, but is > recommend on using it more.
MITRE is one hell of a lot more than just another defense contractor. Look into it's history and you'll see that DoD will value its opinion far above that of some Microsoft lobbiest.
Slashdot Mirror
Why not use an encrypted filesystem and store the key in the token?
> Yahoo or MSN do not receive notification when
> someone cancels their phone account.
Tough shit. They send the stuff: it's up to them to figure out when to stop. If they can't they can damn well not send it at all.
> Is the creation of marketing material that is so
> far removed from the target product to become an
> interesting thing in its own right a valid model
> for doing business?
If by 'valid' you mean 'effective', yes. So are many other forms of fraud and deception.
> But surley the site operator had the subscribers > IP address as well?
I get a different IP address every time I dial up my ISP. And then there's proxies...
> The judge gives the jury instructions on which
> facts have to be demonstrated in order to return
> which verdict. It becomes a set of if-then
> propositions. If Person X did such-and-such, in
> such-and-such way, then return a verdict of
> "guilty."
If that is true there is no point in having a jury at all.
> If one lies, there is the risk of being caught,
> as evidenced by the Bell Labs fraud; perhaps this
> is even more likely to pass in an industrial
> environment where profit can be a motive behind
> "[making] up shit and [lying]".
That's ridiculous. The point of industrial research is to produce things that work so they can be sold for a profit. "Making up shit and lying" does not produce things that work.
> Yahoo's privacy policy reads that way because
> they offer financial services and the like, where
> they may well need financial information from you
> to provide the service.
Why can't they have different policies for different services?
Tell your ISP to provide an NTP server on your side of the firewall.
> I have to say that I echo the concerns that
> others have expressed over the reliability and
> veracity of news reports filed through an
> informal network of uncertified sources.
Would you mind telling us who certifies news sources and why we should care?
> News that you can't rely on to be timely *and*
> accurate is worse than no news at all.
Nonetheless that's just what we get from the conventional media.
> I've already witnessed numerous instances where
> this has resulted in even the "big names"
> getting their facts wrong.
I've seen no evidence that the "big names" are any more likely to get their facts right off the Net than on.
I have no cable provider. I have no television, either.
> Do you really want your news be mostly "First
> Post", penis bird, goatse.cx, Beowulf clusters of
> grits, and NPN&P?
No. If I wanted that I'd watch television.
> It has become increasingly obvious that The Names
> You've Gradually Grown To Trust (like NYT) are
> less and less worthy of that trust...
No they haven't. They were never worthy of the trust you put in them.
Sounds interesting. Too bad it's voice: that makes it useless as far as I am concerned.
Boot from a known good floppy or CD to check your md5sums.
It might get more attention if the Slashdot story provided a link to a summary of the case. Odd as it may seem, there _are_ Slashdot readers who don't know who Blizzard and Bnetd are or why the are in court.
It's not the Department of Homelamd Security. It's the Ministry for State Security.
> By the 1960s, almost everybody in the US had a
> car, but the cars worked well for a year or two
> at best.
This is complete bullshit.
> People say, 'Well, how come we can't build
> software the way we build bridges?'
Writing software is like drawing up the plans for a bridge. The bridge gets built every time the program gets run.
They still own the "copyright", which is really the right to _forbid_ others to make copies.
> I think the only way to preserve data over the
> very long term (thousands of years) is to assume
> that whoever reads it in the future will be an
> alien (eg so different from us as to make any
> assumptions impossibile). Assume nothing about
> what we may have in common, and start from the
> basics.
The way to preserve data of the very long term is to keep making lots of copies in lots of different places on different media and with lots of commentary and explanation added by each generation.
> Any digital data that wants to be permanent...
_Nothing_ is permanent. As soon as you start thinking in terms of a single indestructible copy you've lost. For every Domesday book or Rosetta stone that we still have how many thousand ancient documents are so lost that we don't even know they existed?
> This is just one early indication of how
> difficult it will be to maintain our digital
> heritage.
No, it's an indication of how easy it will be.
Where is the clause forbidding use by the South African police?
Whether or not all MITRE employees are idiots is irrelevant to my point. The fact is that most DoD officials have great respect for MITRE, which has been advising the DoD on technical and policy issues since long before Microsoft was founded.
> This comes after MITRE, a defense contractor,
> published a report stating that not only does the
> Department of Defense use opensource, but is
> recommend on using it more.
MITRE is one hell of a lot more than just another defense contractor. Look into it's history and you'll see that DoD will value its opinion far above that of some Microsoft lobbiest.
> ...if it's at a URL, downloading it is not illegal!
Whatever gave you that idea?